PREFACE

The competition for talent and highly skilled migrants is increasingly the subject of discussion at international conferences. Skilled migration and brain drain have in fact been on the agenda to a varying extent for five decades. Yet despite the longevity of this preoccupation, scant attention has been paid to the role of the family, personal relationships, spousal employment and caring responsibilities, how these differ according to gender, and what impacts they have on policies designed to attract highly skilled migrants

Género y migración cualificada en Europa

This article examines the significance of skilled labour migration and the sectors in which skilled female migrants are employed. It considers some of the major reasons for the lack of attention given to gendered aspects of skilled migration. Nonetheless there have been some interesting theoretical and empirical advances in our understanding of skilled female migrants, which go beyond a general appreciation of the hardships they confront in the course of migration. These studies explore in more detail both the obstacles and their responses and strategies to entry into the labour market and deskilling and in specific sectors and states as well as in the European Union. The article also argues that how immigration regulations shape gendered skilled migrations is a topic which deserves more attention.Este artículo examina el significado de la migración laboral cualificada y los sectores en los que las mujeres migrantes cualificadas están empleadas. Considera alguna de las principales razones que explican la falta de atención que han recibido los aspectos de género de la migración cualificada. Sin embargo, se han producido algunos interesantes avances teóricos y empíricos en la comprensión de las mujeres migrantes cualificadas, que van más allá de una apreciación general de los inconvenientes a los que se enfrentan en el transcurso del proceso migratorio. Estos estudios exploran en detalle tanto los obstáculos como sus respuestas y estrategias a la hora de acceder al mercado de trabajo y de experimentar una pérdida de cualificación en sectores específicos, tanto en los estados como en la UE. El artículo argumenta también que el modo en que las regulaciones sobre inmigración determinan las migraciones cualificadas como procesos generizados es un tema que requiere mayor atención

Gender Differences and Family Reunion in the European Union: Implications for Refugees

The feminization of immigration flows into Europe, both through family reunion and the independent migration of women, has been one of the most significant social changes of the past two decades. This development has, however, remained largely unexplored. This paper examines the consequences of changes in access to family reunion, and its gendered implications for women entering as family migrants and as applicants to sponsor family members. It calls for a positive evaluation of immigration policy aimed at securing rights as weIl as controlling immigration flows.La féminisation du flux migratoire vers l'Europe, du aux réunifications successives de familles ou à l'immigration indépendante des femmes, a été l'un des changements sociaux les plus significatifs des deux dernières décennies. Cependant, ce développement est demeuré largement inexploré. Le présent article examine les conséquences des changements dans l'accessibilité à la réunification familiale et leurs implications pour les femmes entrant comme immigrantes pour raisons familiales, ainsi que pour les femmes envisageant de parrainer des membres de leurs familles candidats à l'immigration. Un appel est fait pour une évaluation positive des politiques d'immigration visant à préserver les droits autant qu'à contrôler le flux migratoire

From mobile workers to fellow citizens and back again? The future status of EU citizens in the UK

Growing concerns and hostility towards continuing large-scale flows of immigrants following the two rounds of EU enlargement and high levels of net migration played a major part in the Brexit referendum result for the UK to leave the EU. So too had welfare chauvinism, or the belief that welfare benefits should be restricted to citizens, come to the fore in negative attitudes to EU immigration, reflecting a rejection of EU migrants as fellow citizens. As the article shows, proposals as of summer 2017 for the status of current EU citizens in the UK indicate a desire by the UK government to incorporate current EU citizens within the far more restrictive British immigration rules, thereby curtailing some of their basic free movement rights, especially in relation to future family members. Leaked proposals for future EU citizens post-Brexit are to bring them within a single overall immigration system covering EU and non-EU migrants and applying differential rights of residence to skilled and less skilled, thereby stratifying EU migrants according to educational level and labour market sector. This would represent a return to the status of mobile workers with conditional rights of residence and social entitlements similar to those faced by non-EU migrants

PREFACE

The competition for talent and highly skilled migrants is increasingly the subject of discussion at international conferences. Skilled migration and brain drain have in fact been on the agenda to a varying extent for five decades. Yet despite the longevity of this preoccupation, scant attention has been paid to the role of the family, personal relationships, spousal employment and caring responsibilities, how these differ according to gender, and what impacts they have on policies designed to attract highly skilled migrants